Facilities and efficiency of Data Centers

The facilities of a data center are very important. The most critical ones are geographic location, electrical system, air-condition and physical securty.

Geography is always at the top of the list of considerations by companies when choosing a location for a data center. Location can affect everything from the cost of electricity to the availability of a skilled workforce and also is very important in order to avoid dangerous zones with high risks of natural disasters, like floodings, seismic moves or earthquakes.

The best way to solve air-condition is with Free-cooling. That consist in taking advantage of the contrast of temperatures when the outside one is lower than the inside, in order to air-condition the data center. That provides a high saving and reduction of operation costs.

A good electrical system consists in preventing a single point of failure. In order to do that all elements of the electrical systems, including backup systems, are fully duplicated, and critical servers are connected to both systems. Also the cabling is under a raised floor for security reasons.

Physical security is a must in a critical data center. The physical access to the site must be restricted and secured with surveillance camera, permanent security guards or other security systems depending on the size and magnitude of the data center.

Fire suppressors are also very important. In data centers agents such as water, dry chemical and carbon dioxide are unacceptable because they cause damage to electronic equipment or present a safety risk to people. So in order to extinguish fire a chemical agent should be used.

In the other hand we have energetic efficiency, a very significant topic because it helps companies to reduce a lot of costs, and if a data center has a bad energy plan the costs will get out of control. So in order to improve that is important to use uninterruptible power supply, because they offer the best efficiency.